4&20 blackbirds

Is US Foreign Policy Run by Sociopaths?

I think it’s really constructive to have the former Secretary of State and presumptive Democrat presidential frontrunner comparing Putin to Hitler.

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine to actions taken by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler outside Germany in the run-up to World War II.

Making her first extensive comments about the crisis in Ukraine, Clinton said at a private fundraiser in California that Putin’s campaign to provide Russian passports to those with Russian connections living outside his country’s borders is reminiscent of Hitler’s protection of ethnic Germans outside Germany, according to a report published overnight.

“Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” Clinton said Tuesday, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. “All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.”

What makes me nervous is a hunch that a good percentage of our political leadership are sociopaths, Hillary Clinton included. That’s the only explanation that makes sense of behavior like this:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed.

“We came, we saw, he died,” she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi’s death by an aide in between formal interviews.

The sociopath who makes me the most nervous, though, is our current president, the willing executioner. The article is a Counterpunch piece by Michael Whitney, an economist I’ve been reading and appreciating for years. I know it will be easy for Democrat apologists to dismiss because Whitney quotes a comment from the blog Moon of Alabama—a blog I link to frequently here because it’s been, for me, one of the most important, effective counters to Western propaganda I’ve been able to find.

The best description of Obama I’ve ever read was in the comments section of a foreign policy blogsite called Moon of Alabama by a blogger named “bevin”. Here’s what he said:

“I think that Obama is completely empty of scruples…just a willing executioner. From the ruling class’s point of view he is the perfect figurehead because his mere appearance confuses and disarms so many. He seems to have spent his whole life trying to get chosen to play Judas. And that is all there is in his resume…

They present him as negligent, never responsible, never intentionally connected to an evil act, never drawn into the acts of duplicity by a conscious intent. This is the false image, the disinformation projected about who he is…

It strikes me that Obama is all those things. And that this is the core of the evil in him- that he is without conscience or principle, just an ordinary butcher going about his business, fulfilling the terms of his employment, doing what he was asked to do…

You see him as focused and intentional.

I see him as someone who will sign a stack of death warrants without reading them, or thinking about them again. Remember just after November 2008, waiting to take office, how the Israelis attacked Gaza, obviously to show him who is boss? Didn’t you sense that even they were surprised at the insouciance with which he watched those extraordinary massacres pass before his eyes?

He didn’t care. And he was, at last, relieved of the chore of pretending that he did care about such things.

That’s really what he likes about being President: he can relax while the killing goes on, he doesn’t need to pretend it bothers him, he doesn’t need to pass any kind of moral judgment.

Remember when he asked his step-father “Have you ever killed men?”

The reply he got was “Only men who were weak.”

He has adhered to that moral standard ever since.” (bevin, Moon of Alabama)

That perfectly summarizes the man; an empty gourd who never had any intention of fulfilling his promises, who has utter disdain for the fools that voted for him, and who finds it as easy to kill a man, his family and his kids, as to swat a fly on his forearm. As bevin notes Obama “is a pure confidence man and a sociopath.”

Who gives these sociopaths cover? Apologists who range from high-paid corporate shills to bloggers who shill for free. An example of the latter can be found at Intelligent Discontent, where the Polish Wolf explains why he “hesitates” to call neo-Nazis by their rightful name. The reasoning is (to use one of Don’s favorite words) astonishing:

Aren’t the protestors in Ukraine Nazis or neo-Nazis? It seems quite likely that some of them adhere to radical right-wing ideologies. It’s also clear that the deaths of protestors during the Euromaiden protests have greatly strengthened the hand of the most radical elements. However, even groups like Pravdiy Sektor or Svoboda, I would hesitate to describe as ‘neo-nazis’, if only because I know some very rational, cosmopolitan Ukrainians who believe that these parties are their best chance to gain national sovereignty.

I love the language PW employs here. A squishy phrase like “seems quite likely” is used to minimize the FACT that, yes, right-wing extremists now hold top-level positions within the new government (Reuters, not Counterpunch). And why support right-wing extremists? Because unnamed “rational, cosmopolitan” Ukrainians believe the ends justify the means.

We are quickly getting to the point of escalating tensions where one wrong move on either side could spark an overt military confrontation. If Putin is uncritically depicted as Hitler, the probable intention is to prepare the collective American psyche for the kind of military effort it took to stop Hitler: a world war.

This is not a good time for US foreign policy to be in the hands of sociopaths. Tens of thousands of Russians protested in Moscow against their country’s escalation. Where are American anti-war protesters?

Oh yeah, they basically threw in the towel after Obama got elected.

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Ah, none of this matters anymore lizard, we’ve been outed. The new McCarthy has discovered there are leftists again and is engaging in 21st century red-baiting. Time to be drug in front of the tribunal and questioned. Except this time the neolibs think they know what we are thinking, and are asking infantile questions, and giving ridiculous answers.

PW’s shtick reminded me of a bad ventriloquist with a leftist puppet on his hand, and you could see his lips moving. Case in point:

McCarthyPW posing a non-leftist question:“Why can’t we just agree to disagree on this issue, since most leftist objections are actually unfounded?”

His puppeteered dummy responds:
“Because not just Russia, but the US and UK swore to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

And a real “leftist” replies:
If “the U.S… swore to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity” we wouldn’t have destabilized the country with the efforts of NED and behind-the-scene “nation building” efforts of Victoria Neuland (and much more under-the-radar activities by the CIA and Academi).

I think PW sends too much time talking to “very rational, cosmopolitan Ukrainians” instead of examining the crisis from multiple independent sources. Even very rational cosmopolitan Americans don’t necessarily know what’s going on, or what to do about our economy or political situation. They’re more interested in the newest fad and goo-gaw than inequity or imperialism. Or maybe “very rational cosmopolitan” is the new buzz word for liberal.

I don’t think it was necessary to include the screen-shot of PW’s Facebook page, mostly because it was a gift-wrapped opportunity for you two to concern-troll the anonymity issue.

I don’t really want to get into it now, but I’m currently very sensitive to the anonymity issue. last week I was outed by a local reporter to a city official close to the Mayor. I’m not entirely sure why, but it will have consequences for me.

what won’t change is the balance I constantly weigh between my right to express my opinions and the responsibility I have honoring important relationships I’ve built among people with a wide spectrum beliefs, people who I have tremendous respect for, but don’t always agree with, politically.

Don, you are too easily astonished. PW is easily identifiable in the “who we are” page at your site and, while I’m not up to date on Facebook privacy settings, putting things out on social media platforms like FB isn’t the best way to communicate privately, if communicating privately was the intent. that said, I will say again that I don’t think including a FB screenshot was necessary, but it wasn’t my post.

Don, at your shop don’t you assure commenters that “Your email address will not be published.” By publishing your exchange with JC including email address, then what does that make your assurance especially since it was off-line and you don’t have his permission to publish? If you decide to redact his email address, then how is anyone to know what else has been removed or changed in your efforts to prove your point? Seems you are only going further down the rabbit hole with no plan. Not good.

Don, you are not elevating yourself by going further down the rabbit hole. Assuming JC uses the same email address for comment at your site and for private emails to you, you are still confronted with the same ethical problem from your assurance not to disclose. If you break that assurance, what does than make you? Now, if you are in doubt about JC’s consent, send him an email and ask if you may disclose.

Don, let me make it very clear for you. If you publish his email address, you have broken your assurance not to have done so. That would make you a liar separate and apart from anything you and JC are mud wrestling about, IMHO. Because you have no way out of that conundrum doesn’t change that breach of trust nor does it provide you a get out of jail free card on ethics.

Now, you have had sufficient time to think it through as to what you are going to do, and you have posted nothing at this time. Shit or get off the pot, because just to sit there making noises is ridiculous.